1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to techniques for protecting data in databases. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for masking an index value in a database.
2. Related Art
Before an organization releases a new data-processing application, the organization typically tests the functionality of the application to ensure that the application is functioning in accordance with a specification. Testing the application often requires access to a large amount of sample data. In many cases, generating this large amount of sample data can be time-consuming and inconvenient.
One solution to this problem is to use existing real data. Many organizations use existing data from other data-processing applications, or they purchase existing data from other organizations. However, this existing data often includes sensitive information, such as social security numbers. To protect this sensitive data from unauthorized access, an organization typically masks the sensitive data. Applications often store their data in databases, which use B-trees to index the data. However, masking the data stored in nodes in these B-trees can be a time-consuming task. In the worst case, masking the data in a B-tree node requires O(n log(n)) operations.
Hence, what is needed is a method and apparatus for efficiently masking data in a database index.